March 29, 2001

I've never really been very good at being a girl.

I was brought up by my mom, who wanted to be a doctor before women were
doctors, who was in turn influenced by her grandmother, who ran away from
the family farm in order to marry the man she loved (it should be pointed out
that my grandmother was born solely to take care of the farm and her parents
as they grew older). My mom went into the Peace Corps and lived in Thailand,
when women didn't live in Thailand, where she rode a bicycle and swam in the
ocean. Women, as you might have already guessed, didn't ride bicycles or
swim in the ocean. When my mom was in her late twenties, she began to get
tired of doing what women weren't supposed to do, and in 1969, at the old
spinster age of 30, she married my father. They, in turn, raised a woman
who played with computers and rode motorcycles, in an age where women were
told that they could play with computers and ride motorcycles, but still
got funny looks and snide comments for doing so, and then were told that
it was their shortcomings or imaginations that produced those looks and
comments, since this was the late 20th century, and obviously we had
progressed past the point of gender discrimination.

My best friend growing up is now a lesbian singer who finally escaped a
tumultuous multi-year abusive relationship and, last I heard, was the captain
of a bowling team composed of all (except for her) drag queens.

I've always wanted girls to be more like boys, or at least society's view of
the two genders to be more homogenous. Do you have any idea what it's like
to have had 24 years of being a girl wishing to be treated like a boy and
therefore doing
non-girl things and incapable of relating to most girls but being shunned
and insulted when you accidentally act like one? You end up living your
life in fear that you might unintentionally show some vulnerable side to
yourself. You grow afraid to ask questions in computer classes, because
the smart boys don't ask. You grow angry when you drop your motorcycle, because
the cool boys don't crash. You're uncomfortable hanging out with feminine
girls, because, frankly, you couldn't give a shit about whether their face
looks shiny with their new makeup, but have no idea how to pretend that you
do. But god help you if you ever have a girl thought. God help you if you
ever, for a fleeting moment, want to be hit on, or catcalled to, or, even
worse, married with children or in some other "traditional" relationship.
Because, man, people will be ruthless. The shit I'm thinking of makes me
want to spout nonsense melodrama like "I'll never trust anyone like that again!"
or "I'll never open myself up like that again!" just because, fuck, that's
what women do, right? Pointless melodrama when they're angry, right?

Someone fucking tell me how to work this. Tell me how I can program a
computer and ride a bike and still want to look hot in my leathers and still
have it be ok to want to live with my boyfriend and not feel angry with myself
for "thinking like a girl again." Tell me how to tell the people I love not to
feel angry with me for "thinking like a girl again." Tell me how to gracefully
tell someone to fuck off when they get frustrated with me for "thinking like a
girl again." Tell me how to deal with the people who
insult me when I show any vulnerability or try to express what I want and
need. Tell me how I can, in the same thought, hate the anti-feminist
bike bunnies who pose on the Ducatis, and also desperately want to be one.
Tell me how I can avoid another night of sitting in my work parking lot,
inexplicably bursting into tears while removing my disc lock, and spending
15 minutes sobbing with my face pressed up against the front fairing, because
the bike is, to me, a symbol of everything I want to be, and everything I
can't.